Silk Makers Of Japan (1964)

One of nature's wonder products is silk. The work of caterpillars is transformed by the hands of man into beautiful fabrics. like satin and velvet, like taffeta and brocade. These are only a few of the fine fabrics made of silk. The first silk fabric was woven in China about 5,000 years ago. Much later, the silk industry was carried to Europe on the same road that was to be traveled by Marco Polo. In about the year 200 AD, silk production was introduced in Korea and then Japan. Today, more than half of the world's silk is produced in Japan. The Hatioji district is one of the many silk producing areas in Japan. Here, the Shimatsu family, like many other farm families, makes part of its livelihood from silk. The Shimatsus grow many malberry trees on their farm because the leaves are needed to feed silk caterpillars. Malberry leaves are the only food that silk caterpillars will eat. And the better the leaves, the better the silk. The shimatsus have three fields of malberry bushes. One for harvesting in the spring, one for summer, and one for autumn. This way they can raise caterpillars and sell the cocoons three times a year. When the leaves are large and tender, tiny black kos are hatched from eggs. The KGO is the larvae stage of the silk moth. Actually, the kos are very tiny. These pictures are greatly enlarged so we can see them better. In the next few weeks, Mr. Shimatsu will gather many baskets full of leaves. The mulberry leaves are cut into small pieces to feed the kos. As the caterpillars grow larger, they take larger pieces of leaves which are chopped in a simple machine. Soon the caterpillars will be so large that the leaves will not be chopped at all. During the first 24 hours of their lives, the young caterpillars eat several times their own weight. In a few days, they will turn from black to white. They have begun an amazing growth period. In just four weeks, they grow to be about 10,000 times larger than when they were first hatched. That's why they must have large quantities of leaves to eat. It is also why their skins just can't grow fast enough to keep up with them. So, every 3 or 4 days, the caterpillars will stop eating, sleep for one day, and shed their skins. This happens four times during this period of growth. Although they are often called silk worms, they are really silk caterpillars. Their appetites are enormous. [music] >> [music] [music] >> But soon these caterpillars will lose all interest in food. They will move around nervously but won't eat a thing. This means that their silk glands are full of liquid silk and they are looking for a suitable place to spin their cocoons. At this stage, some farmers still use the old method of placing the caterpillars on newspapers on the floor and covering them with a mat made of rice straw. But the shimatsu family has a better method. They have wooden racks with holes just the right size for spinning cocoons. Each caterpillar finds a vacancy and moves in. It begins to anchor itself in place with a sticky substance which comes from a tiny hole near the mouth. The substance is an extremely thin thread of liquid silk which quickly hardens in the air. The silk is covered with a natural glue called sarrain. Sarasin is very important in every step of silk making because the caterpillar continues to spin until it is completely enclosed in a ball of silk called a cocoon. It takes about 3 days to complete a cocoon. During this period, caterpillars are especially sensitive to loud noises, so everyone is careful to speak softly. Any loud noises would cause them to stop spinning. Several days later, the cocoons are removed from the racks. If we look inside one of them, we will see that the caterpillar has become much smaller and has turned into a pupa. If it were left alone, the pupa would turn into a moth and work its way out of the cocoon. Of course, this ruins the cocoon. The female moth mates with a male and lays about 500 eggs. This completes the life cycle, so the moth soon dies. However, only certain people who are licensed by the government allow the moths to come out of the cocoons. Mrs. Shimatsu keeps some of her cocoons until winter when she will have time to reel off the silk thread and weave it into beautiful cloth. Weaving is very slow on a hand loom. Most of the cocoons are sold to a factory called a steam filature. Here they are given a heat treatment to kill the pupas inside them. They are carefully inspected. The ones that are damaged or discolored are taken out. Boiling water softens the sarasin or glue so that the threads can be unwound easily. The agitator works back and forth until the end of each strand is loose. As the end is found, it's fed into this machine and is wound onto a reel. Each cocoon will give a single strand about a half mile long. The strand is so small that seven are wound together to make a larger thread. The newest machines do more of these steps automatically so that each worker can produce many times more raw silk. The threads are rewound onto larger frames and are then twisted into skes. Almost all of this work is done by girls. Most of them are farm girls who have come to the factory to earn more money. Living in the dormatory is quite different from life on the farm. Their rooms and food are furnished by the company. After a few years, the girls usually get married or return home. When there is work to do, the girls are on the job. 30 skes of raw silk are packed into a bundle called a book. and 29 books make up a bail. Before they are sold, the bales of raw silk must go to a government testing bureau. This is necessary to keep Japan silk the finest in the world. Samples from every tenth bail are removed. They are tested for moisture, for size, for strength, and finally for weight. Some of the approved silk is shipped to other countries, so it is packed very carefully. The bail is first covered with a cloth bag, then a stiff paper bag, and finally a heavy matting. This shipment will go through the Panama Canal to New York City. It is loaded into special moisture proof compartments on the ship because each bail is worth several hundred. Most of Japan's silk is not exported. However, in Kyoto and other cities, the raw silk is woven into cloth. The threads are doubled and twisted. The sarin is removed. Although much of the weaving is done automatically, it still takes people to thread the looms and the shuttles. This loom is sending two shuttles back and forth. The finished cloth is carefully inspected for flaws before it is washed in a river. Some rivers in Japan have just the right chemicals for fixing the dyes. Silk making in Japan is a wonderful combination of old methods and new methods, the work of nature and the work of man. Silk was once as valuable as gold because it was the world's first truly fine material. Its beauty and usefulness have kept pace with the changing times. So that today, as for centuries past, silk is still known as the queen of fabrics. [music] >> [music] [music]